Some of the cursory review headlines for JW I’ve found: “For the love of God, will someone put Jurassic World out of its misery” and “This nonsense has gone far enough”. Sequels to reboots of multifilm franchises are hard. You know what they say, the second one is hard, but the fifth is even harder. That’s why Lord of the Rings never went past three. Did they split the last one into two movies or was that Harry Potter’s seventh? Or… The Hobbit? I think with The Hobbit they made a single book into a trilogy. Can we just agree that if you’re in the theater for JW, you’ve already resigned yourself to a very specific viewing experience? We’re here for Jeff Goldblum, maybe for those two new-comers Zia Gonzales and Franklin I-Have-A-High-Pitched-Scream, and for an explanation of how a raptor gets into a kid’s attic. So, we’ll do some spoiler-y reflections on this below and come meet us when you’re all caught up.
The film suffers from some major trailer fatigue. A lot of this movie appears in the second, much worse and revealing trailer of the film where it’s clear that the dinosaurs have escape the island yet again. What the first trailer had going for it was we had a feeling that the movie was going to attempt a genre jump from dinosaur safari (1st movie) to rescue mission (2nd) to catastrophe (3rd) to reboot and recycle of concept (4th) to horror maybe (claws pulling at the girl under the sheet). The second trailer seems to have been compiled at the behest of some literal-minded press person who thought that dinosaurs in the attic was too “art-house” for the movie-going public, who needed more assurances that there would be close-up scares and political intrigue and the ever-present threat of the military-industrial complex. That being said, there are at least a couple moments where the movie departs from the trailer in fun ways, sparing us the tired punchline to Chris Pratt’s ventriloquist line, and even the potentially iconic raptor creep scene in the girl’s bedroom.
The new species cloning storyline was the most surprising twist of the movie (older brother says), but they don’t actually do very much with it, and it feels a little too far from the source material to fuel a movie of its own if spin-offs are in the future. The opening scene underwater and the business of the hide-and-go-seek game in the mansion are fresh settings for the series and are probably the reason why at least one review sees this movie as going back to the formula that worked so well for the first reboot (although I think the jury is still out).
Colin Trevorrow’s mess of a script should come as a surprise to no one paying attention (see, Book of Henry critical reception). It’s more of a rough draft or an opening pitch, or an example of what you phone in before you find someone new to write a new script. The secondary characters that looked like they were going to get a lot of time to expand the reach of the story (two young hipsters with a sense of humor and just the right amount of grit and fear to be the lovable surrogate for the audience) ended up being parodies of real characters: the paranoid computer whiz and the plucky punk that Jeff Goldblum’s character used to inhabit before he went and brought his teenage daughter to the island in the second film. Zia actually seems like she could have been the perfect counterbalance to a shlockier, deadpan script when she calls Chris Pratt “beefcake” without cracking a smile. She seems to be the only one who really appreciates the unintentional humor of the movie, the woman who doesn’t wear heels onto the island for two hours of chase scenes, but, alas, she’s laid up caring for Blue and can’t be bothered for a cut scene the moment that Blue is released from her care.
If this isn’t a ramp up to a much more complex and world-threatening monster movie next year, I will be pretty confused about a few scenes. All the white people you’re rooting for will live and a few of the people of color you weren’t expecting to will die. There’s some stakes, but I’m not entirely sure what they are. Dumbwaiters are as effective as you had always expected in cartoons, and turning out the lights is the best way to outsmart a creature that has been bred to smell you from a mile away. Too many threads to this yarn ball. Just as insane as the poster makes it seem.
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